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An Etruscan imitation of an Attic cup

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Rodin bought many antiques in his life, and these are now preserved in the Rodin Museum in Paris. They are not very well known, but they include a few fine pieces well worth seeing and studying. Some seventy ancient vases are on exhibition, and do not seem ever to have been published or described, apart from stray mentions in sale catalogues.

A few years ago I became interested in the collection, and noticed a very curious red-figured cup, which I shall describe.

Pl. I. Rodin Museum inv. Tc. 980 (formerly inv. 1943). Diameter 23·2 centimetres. The present height is 9·5 centimetres, but the foot is alien: it comes from a little-master cup. The handles belong: the ends of them are rounded, not squared as in late cups.

I: two satyrs. The left-hand one totters forward in a dancing movement, carrying a large wineskin on his back. He grasps the upper end with his left hand, just above his head, to prevent it sliding down. The right arm is lowered, with the fingers of the hand raised. His tail does not show, and his left leg is almost entirely hidden behind the krater on which his companion is seated; a bit of the calf appears to the left of the base. The second satyr, who wears a wreath of ivy, is sitting on the foot of a large calyx-krater which has been turned upside down; streaks on the uneven ground represent the remains of the wine: the feast is over.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1937

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References

1 I am very grateful to M. Georges Grappe, Keeper of the Rodin Museum, for his kind permission to publish the cup, and am aware that this permission is probably the first of its kind. I am greatly indebted to Mr. J. D. Beazley, who has examined the cup and given me his opinion on it; has made many valuable suggestions; and has read and corrected this paper. I also wish to thank M. J. P. Hippeau, attaché at the Rodin Museum, for all his help and interest in the matter; and M. Giraudon for the photographs of the cup.

2 Hartwig Meisterschalen, pl. 13; phots. Alinari 35829 and 35800–1; Beazley, , Att. V. p. 205, no. 77Google Scholar: Mr. Beazley tells me that he now believes the cup to be not by Douris himself but by the same pupil and very close imitator as the Oxford arming cup (1929–752; CV. Oxford, pl. 52, 1, and pl. 54, 1–2). The inside picture, Oedipus and the Sphinx, has often been figured. We reproduce B from Alinari's photograph, A from an old photograph taken before the cup was repainted.

3 The old photograph reproduced in our plate shows more of the original tail than Hartwig's drawing or Alinari's photograph.

4 10, 179; AZ 1885, pl. 10; Beazley, VA p. 82; Pfuhl, fig. 414.

5 Ducati, , Ceramica della penisola italiana, p. 18, xGoogle Scholar.

6 Antike Gemmen, pl. 16, 49 and iii. p. 183 (now in Boston), and pl. 8, 37.

7 Mus. Greg. ii. pl. 83, 2; I, phot. Alinari 35833.

8 Gaz. arch. 1879, pll. 3–5, whence Roscher, pp. 1107–1108, fig. 7.

9 To be published by Beazley and Magi in their forthcoming Raccolta Guglielmi.

10 RM 30, pp. 131–146.

11 See Beazley, in JHS 56, p. 253Google Scholar, middle.